The neo-classicists 'attitude towards the Middle Ages and early Renaissance was an original contribution to the development of eighteenth-century taste and ideas, more individual than their attitude towards the antique, towards idealization, and towards other concepts which largely derive from the preced - ing century.

All field-like constructs of the preced - ing century were fully retained, and even enlarged and added to; but they were all balanced or complemented by the introduction of appropriate particle-like con - structs of a dual kind.

Neither Black nor Arrow were aware at the time they first wrote of any of the preced - ing literature, though it is hard to exclude the possi - bility that some of this knowledge was in a vague sense common property.